Oldies Lyrics: No No No No No No, It Ain’t You, Bob.

Today, in part 4 of what promises to become The Continuing Saga of Our Feature on Bad Lyrics (AKA “No You Can’t Take the Fucking Weather With You”), we’re going to massacre the discographies of some older, more experienced, more washed-up musicians.

You see, I’ve noticed that there’s something specific and terrifying that happens when musicians reach the apex of their careers. It is especially serious in cases where the artists have achieved a debilitating level of fame and critical adulation, where said summit makes those of their contemporaries look like the hill in that Hugh Grant film (the one about the love lives of British surveyors) when placed next to, say, the Himalayas. (Who’d've thought a film pithily titled The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain wouldn’t be a big commercial hit, anyway?) It’s a symptom of what I like to call the Cereal Box Syndrome (CBS), where the artist can take any piece of found text, wrap a melody around it, and then perform it as though singing the complete works of William fucking Shakespeare distilled to five verses and a chorus. Do some independent research if you disagree, and you’ll be surprised how widespread this sickness is. Maybe then you too will be amazed at the fact that this devastating scourge has pervaded the music industry and yet stayed off the Top 40 list of Celebrity Causes. I mean, celebrities are nuts for causes, especially if they involve some kind of debilitating, potentially fatal disease, and (optimally) the celebrity themselves: Muscular dystrophy; HIV/AIDS; whatever disease turned the kid from Family Ties into a retired postmaster with myxomatosis. (That’s the shakes, for those in the slow seats.)

No You Can’t Take the Fucking Weather With You (Part 3)

Okay, children, so I was going to do something different today, and take a little break from bashing terrible lyrics, but then the universe took a massive, car-shaped dump on my day, after which it proceeded to force a whole bunch of someone else’s work onto my already overloaded schedule to keep me occupied while I wait for the stench to lift. (Suppose I should’ve known, what with it being Tuesday the 13th.) So instead of racking my brain for something new and exciting with which to torment your fragile little minds, I shall instead stick to what has been a rather productive subject thus far, and continue to malign shitty song-writing.

Now, I realize that there are people who think song lyrics are the new form of poetry. Perhaps – if you consider hastily assembled fridge magnets and the sound of a million bloggers rhyming to be synonymous with “poetry”. Perhaps you prefer your “poetry” written by the kind of people who’d shit in their own hands, take a deep whiff, lick the edges straight, and then hurl it at passers-by. Otherwise, if you are aware of people like Shakespeare, DH Lawrence, and Philip Larkin, or even William “Spade! with which Wilkinson hath toiled his lands!” Wordsworth, you may, like me, consider song lyrics the new petard by which our musicians routinely hoist themselves.

Elvis has left the building.

Okay, it’s official: Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts just had sex. That’s right, people, pack up your troubles, your cares, and your children, for the Coming of the Apocalypse is upon us. How do I know this, you ask; what was the final clue that convinced me all Hell had been unleashed upon the earth? By which signs and portents were the arrival of the Four Horsepersons revealed to me? I know this, dear reader, because Mariah Carey now officially has more hits than Elvis. How the fucking fuck did this happen? I mean, is this our fault? Frankly, I’d be tempted to blame you, the buying public, for your atrocious taste in music. I mean, just because it’s ‘disposable income’ doesn’t mean you should dispose of it in the garbage chute that is Mariah Carey’s discography. What kind of a universe is this? Elvis dies from a heart attack on the toilet, Hendrix drowns in his own vomit, but Richard Clayderman lives to a ripe old age? Is it our fault? I mean, Lennon gets shot but we let Paris Hilton live – what the fuck is going on here?

Tokin’ Jesus: The Great Bake-Off in the Sky.
I swear, God’s just fucking with us now.

No, You Can’t Take the Fucking Weather With You [Part 1]

I listen to a lot of music. I do so for a multitude of reasons. For one thing, I like to think of myself as a cultured sort, who enjoys experiencing all kinds of aural stimuli, from the screams of the innocent to the dying calls of the whales to the yodelling of the clinically insane. However, I also do so because I am forced to, because of the fact that I work in what is politely called “an open-planned office environment” but which is really just a nice way of saying “public toilet with all the doors and walls torn down and the roof lifted off and the front door open with a camera pointed at you for the duration of your stay and projected onto the large outdoor screen for the edification of the passing public”. It’s just that kind of privacy, silence, and class which one typically enjoys in such an environment and that so many of us have come to treasure.

At least these monkeys don’t sing…

Now, the advantage of listening to music at work is that often I am busy with something else while I am listening to it. This may not immediately strike you as a good thing, because, after all, part of the joy of music (“popular music”, anyway) is the combination of a decent melody with something akin to poetry. That is all well and good. However, we all know that the overwhelming majority of modern songs have lyrics more closely approaching the rantings of a botched lobotomy experiment, the snot-breathing, foetus-throwing product of a broken home, than the works of Shakespeare, Keats, or your average neighbourhood toilet stall.